Document Type

Publication Version

Published Version

Publication Date

12-2014

Journal or Book Title

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

Volume

136

Issue

6

First Page

3018

Last Page

3027

DOI

10.1121/1.4898426

Abstract

Cavitation-based histotripsy uses high-intensity focused ultrasound at low duty factor to create bubble clouds inside tissue to liquefy a region, and provides better fidelity to planned lesion coordinates and the ability to perform real-time monitoring. The goal of this study was to identify the most important mechanical properties for predicting lesion dimensions, among these three: Young's modulus, bending strength, and fracture toughness. Lesions were generated inside tissue-mimicking agar, and correlations were examined between the mechanical properties and the lesion dimensions, quantified by lesion volume and by the width and length of the equivalent bubble cluster. Histotripsy was applied to agar samples with varied properties. A cuboid of 4.5mm width (lateral to focal plane) and 6mm depth (along beam axis) was scanned in a raster pattern with respective step sizes of 0.75 and 3mm. The exposure at each treatment location was either 15, 30, or 60s. Results showed that only Young's modulus influenced histotripsy's ablative ability and was significantly correlated with lesion volume and bubble cluster dimensions. The other two properties had negligible effects on lesion formation. Also, exposure time differentially affected the width and depth of the bubble cluster volume.

Comments

The following article appeared in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 136 (2014): 3018 and may be found at doi: 10.1121/1.4898426.

Rights

Copyright 2014 Acoustical Society of America. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the Acoustical Society of America.